more genuine Christmas music…

… I say ‘genuine’ since not all music labeled Christmas Music and played this time of year has necessarily anything to do with Christmas. Interestingly too, most typical Christmas Music is played during the season of Advent and immediately stops the day after Christmas, when the rest of us are just beginning the Christmas season. So really it’s more Winter Music about snow and presents and flying reindeer.

Oh, I’m not one of those people; the anti-Santa crowd who demand everyone say “Merry Christmas” and think “Xmas” is a liberal plot to stamp Christ out of Christmas. I’m more anti-insipid music, which most generic holiday music is. There’s just so many sweeter sounds to drip in your ears, why fill your head with inane jingles?

One such sweet sound is the new CD released by the Saint Vincent Camerata Scholars, A Blessed Day Has Dawned, now available on iTunes.

Fr. Stephen Concordia writes, “The Palestrina Mass is at the center of the CD, but other styles are also present. We wanted to fill in the other Mass parts in Gregorian chant: the Introit (entrance), the Alleluia, the Gospel of the day, and the Communion antiphon. This evokes what a Renaissance Mass might have sounded like, with some parts sung in polyphony, and others chanted”.

The result is sublime.